State of the art of the theory of relativistic plasma microwave electronics

Theoretical research on high-power microwave sources based on stimulated emission from relativistic election beams (REBs) in plasma waveguides are reviewed. Both microwave amplifiers and oscillators are investigated. Two mechanisms for stimulated resonant Cherenkov emission from a relativistic electron beam — single-particle or Thomson emission and collective or Raman emission — are studied. Although the paper is devoted to theoretical problems, all estimates and are made with real experiments in mind and theoretical results are compared with experimental data.